… I would spoil my ballot with the name of someone who I wish would run.

Pick someone with experience in their areas of your greatest concern.
You’re gonna have to go with your gut instinct.
Go to a League of Women Voters Site. No, not for the ladies voting, they usually have a breakdown of candidates towards your area’s voting day.
List all names in your party and find a site the doesn’t try to sway for what they want you to do, bias.

You’re not going to get everything you want out of any candidate, so study them all carefully – their policies and positions, not just their soundbytes, and find the one who ticks the most boxes for you.

Project Vote Smart is a good resource to start with.

Simple, don’t vote, period.

If all the candidates are so displeasing that you really can’t vote for any of them, you can write-in someone else’s name. I don’t mean “Mickey Mouse” or anything so trivial, but somebody you admire, respect, and would like to elect.

You’ll have “wasted” your vote in some ways, but you’ll have made it meaningful in other ways. You get to make a statement about your beliefs, while not supporting some default candidate who offends you.

I have always voted against the person most likely to do the greatest amount of damage.

This is the first time I’ll be voting for someone.

It feels nice.

I stamp each candidate’s name on a nail and then drive the nails in to my forehead. The one that hurts the least is the one I vote for.

before you all take this as a quip ask yourselves, “isn’t that what choosing the lesser of two evils is pretty much like?”.

I would vote for the candidate who has more experience and the least amount of favors he/she has to honor.

I would analyse their position on the issues affecting my country, local effects and personal effects. Use a spreadsheet if necessary. Write down the hot ticket (and not so hot ticket items), list them in order of priority for the country, your local area and you, and then analyse each politician’s position on that topic. Be scientific about it.

After I’d done that, I’d re-look at the candidates and probably pick the best of a bad bunch. Sometimes it just isn’t possible to pick a candidate that you really like and connect with.

Choose the top 10 issues that are most important to you personally, then find the candidate that is most in line with you on the most issues.

If you have no reason to vote for any one of them, don’t vote. That’s better than voting just for the heck of it.

Pick somebody you don’t like, then find out who they’re voting for and vote for the other candidate. That way you cancel out their vote and gain some satisfaction for doing so.

@Jaxk . . . That is quite possibly the most accurate definition for our democratic process that I have ever read. My hat’s off to you sir!

Don’t.